Top-Earning Authors

Tried and true, blue-chip authors ruled the shelves this year thanks to a spate of fall and winter releases from stalwarts like Stephen King, James Patterson and Bob Woodward. While 2006 net sales figures wont be available from the Association of American Publishers until after the new year, the new titles from literary superstars should lift sales this holiday season for booksellers who suffered a sluggish first-half of the year.

Forty-four months after its original publication, The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, continues to haunt best-seller lists. With 20 million copies in print in the U.S. alone, the pageturner about the Catholic Church is already the best-selling book of the decade. (The paperback edition of his previous novel, Angels & Demons, remained a hit this year, as well.) This years sales were goosed in part by
Sony
Pictures summer release of the film adaptation starring Tom Hanks. Though a critical disappointment, that film banked $766 million worldwide, crowning it the second-highest-grossing movie of the year. (See: From Best Seller To Blockbuster.)

Brown, who made $88 million last year, leads the pack of the highest-earning authors on the Celebrity 100, Forbes annual tally of Hollywoods most influential entertainers, based in part on income for the twelve months ended July 2006. Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling trailed Brown, pocketing $75 million last year from book sales, royalties from Potter films and merchandising. The boy wizard brand is, in fact, so valuable that Rowling is the worlds first author billionaire. John Grisham, best known for legal thrillers, returned to the best-seller lists this year with his first non-fiction foray, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, film rights for which have already been optioned by George Clooney.

Perhaps the unlikeliest author on the top-earners list is Evangelical pastor Rick Warren, whose The Purpose Driven Life, first published in 2002 by News Corp.s
Christian imprint Zondervan, has sold 4.8 million copies in 2006 alone. Warren, who appears on the list with $25 million, has built a cottage industry on the spiritual guidebook, peddling kiddie versions, videos and religious paraphernalia--$12.99 for a Purpose Driven Life bible cover--on his Web site. (Warren says he gives away 90% if his income to charity.)

Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom scored big this fall with his third novel, For One More Day, which already has 4 million copies in print. In a publishing first, copies of the book were also sold at
Starbucks
nationwide as part of the java giants new entertainment strategy. While Starbucks isnt the first to take on big-box bookstores like
Barnes & Noble
and Borders--hipster clothiers like
Urban Outfitters
have been doing it for months--the java giant could poach precious market share from traditional booksellers.

The year in publishing was marked by several plagiarism scandals, including the revelation that James Frey had fabricated parts of his best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces. The disclosure earned him an on-air tongue lashing from Oprah Winfrey, who helped popularize the book through her ultra-influential book club. Freys publisher, Random House, is finalizing a class action settlement brought by disgruntled readers, after which customers can seek refunds. In April, Little, Brown withdrew a reported $500,000 advance given to Harvard co-ed Kaavya Viswanathan after plagiarized passages were discovered in her novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.

Perhaps the biggest literary firestorm of the year raged around a book never even published. In November, after vociferous criticism, News Corp. pulled the plug on the planned Random House release of If I Did It, a quasi-confessional by O.J. Simpson in which he ruminates on how he would have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman--had he done it. ''I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project,'' News Corp. Chief
Rupert
Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
said.

To be sure, there were several high-profile disappointments , including former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreeveys tell-all, The Confession. Despite national coverage and a coveted spot on the Oprah Winfrey Show in November, the book, which detailed McGreeveys gay affair while he held office (his alleged lover, Golan Chipel, denies the affair), has sold just 32,000 copies since its September debut, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Paul Burrell, former butler to Princess Diana, published a second tome about his former employer, The Way We Were: Remembering Diana. Though his earlier book, A Royal Duty, sold over two million copies, his latest collection of reminisces has sold just 21,000 copies.